Month: Feb 2016

Andrew has hit the nail on the head with this reivew of the abysmally poor Muppets reboot. I was excited they were coming back and it was being picked up by Sky in the UK. But when they trailed the fact that Kermit and Piggy were breaking up it was a red flag. Worse still when it turned out Kermit’s new girlfriend Denise was younger, thinner and less outrageous than his old flame. And also a pig. A pig! He can’t help himself can he? That frog has some serious issues.

I am and always have been Team Piggy. I would like very much to be her when I grow up. Mr H would probably say I’m exactly like her right now and don’t need to change at all. I want to perfect the hair-tossing flounce – Harumph!

The viewing public were not happy with this break-up. Fictional and felt they may be, but these characters are very imporant to people the world over. The fans watched, and continued to watch hoping that something would work. But it didn’t. The Muppets have always been about rebellion, and sticking their middle finger (paw?) up at to man. They’re always putting on one last charity show to save the Muppet Theatre from fat-cat developers for the love of it, but now they’re working in late night tv (Up Late With Miss Piggy) that love has gone.

And we don’t love it anymore, and that’s a real shame.

As Andrew says, I hope the team behind this flop get the message. We still love The Muppets and their crazy mad-cap joie de vivre but this was not the format for them. Try again please, and do it better!

I’m a little behind with what is on my DVR so I’m watching the Disneyland 60 special that was on the other week. Kermit the Frog came on and did his song The Rainbow Connection that I absolutely adore. He did it with some girl that has an amazing voice and I don’t remember her name (Tori Kelly perhaps?). Anyway, no offense to her, but shes not important to what I’m getting at. As I was watching this I was smiling like an idiot because The Muppets mean so much to me. I love the movies, the shows, and the songs. When I heard about the new TV show that ABC was putting out I was beyond excited. That was until I started to hear more and more about it.

The show was going to be filmed in the same style that The Office was. I didn’t like the office…

Just before Christmas I was desperate for a Game Boy. This statement is true, both in 1990 and 2015.

I really, really, really wanted a Game Boy mainly to play Tetris but also because it was cool and all the cool kids were getting one. As with many things when I was a kid I had my heart set on it, and could not be dissuaded by my parents, who may have mentioned awkward things like cost and it being a total waste of time. I didn’t care. I couldn’t hear them over the deafening sound of my sighs of longing.

What I did get was a grey plastic gaming device – it was a sort of executive toy that had a small screen and buttons, but the only game you could play on it was a sort of black and white Tetris knock off. I did play with it, and it’s probably still in a box in the loft, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me because I can’t even tell you what it was called.

As of last week ITV has a science entertainment show! I know! Shocking right? This from the channel that regularly brings you live testicle-eating on I’m A Celebrity. But science is having a moment right now (which I can show with graphs and equations stems directly from Professor Brian Cox’s beautiful hair), so why the hell not? Science isn’t the preserve of the BBC alone.

Stand-up comic Romesh Ranganathan, Countdown mathematician and general cleverclogs Rachel Riley, and comedian and actor Ben Miller seem on paper to be a strange selection of presenters, but they all have maths and science backgrounds. And they were all sparky and enthusiastic. Even their Top Gear style banter seemed quite natural. You can tell Rachel Riley has been taking notes after working with Jimmy Carr – her comedy timing is on point!

I read a really inspiring blog post last week about the importance of tv comedy. Sarah at Gracefully Falling Upwards wrote about how comedy changed her life; how it helped her laugh and feel ok during a particularly dark and difficult time in her life. She says:

“Comedy was there for me when I didn’t have the words to tell anyone how I felt. Comedy was there to make me laugh on the days that I didn’t even want to get out of bed. Comedy made me feel like the world wasn’t always so dark and painful and that eventually it does get better.”

This really resonated with me. When I was little I was pretty awkward and quite lonely. I found solace in books, rather than tv. I still do. Along side trying to keep up to date with great tv shows, and finding the time to write about them for you folks, my challenge is to read 70 books this year! (You can follow my progress at GoodReads). Basically I’m going to spend so much time sitting this year I might develop DVT!

A cold and bitter welcome to my new Saturday night drama obsession, in the coveted Euro drama slot on BBC4. This is Trapped, a murder mystery, police procedural type-drama: the first Icelandic drama on British tv – dark, cold and wintery. There’s been a gruesome murder, Andri the local cop with serious family problems has to save the day and a terrifying storm is setting in.

From the start the weather looks authentic – not a single flake of fake snow. I genuinely wondered if the producers had waited for a real storm to begin filming. But commenters on the internet who live quite a bit further north than me have pointed out it looks like summer with the characters running around with no hats on. A tell-tale giveaway, if you know what you’re looking for.

BBC4’s weekend crime slot moves from Montalbano’s sunny Italy to a chilly northern Iceland on Saturday 13 February. Trapped, the channel’s first Icelandic crime drama, begins with two back-to-back episodes at 9.00pm (there are 10 episodes in total). This RVK Studios series will give many British viewers their first taste of the Icelandic language (subtitles also at the ready, of course).

Trapped is set in Siglufjörður (the same fishing port featured in Ragnar Jónasson’s ‘Dark Iceland’ crime series). The opening episodes show three events happening almost simultaneously: a ferry with three hundred passengers arriving from Denmark, the discovery of a corpse in the water, and the onset of a violent snowstorm. The storm prevents the ferry from leaving and blocks roads in and out of town, trapping the passengers and townsfolk with the killer. Step forward Police Inspector Andri, who is tasked with investigating this high pressure case…

Dear readers, I hope you know that I suffer so you don’t have to. I watch the shows that gets a lot of excited previews but leave you confused and disappointed. I’ll haul the coal, deal with the pressure and present to you the diamonds. As we all know, your telly time is limited and you don’t want to waste it on stinkers. Treat this blog as a (highly subjective) guide to avoiding the stench.

I was really looking forward to Beowulf Return to the Shield Lands (ITV) but what in the fuck was that all about? It didn’t help that I was watching it with a fan of the poem. Immediately Mr H was saying “nope” to all the characters and plot developments that weren’t true to the original. The first five minutes made him sound like a beatbox. From the get-go it was like a class of primary school children had decided to do scenes from Game of Thrones as their school play. Their teacher should be fired.